Tuesday, September 13, 2005

Same shit, more bureaucratical minutiae

It's not a "Do Now," it's a "Motivation."

We may NOT abbreviate "instructional objective." We must actually write out those two long words every day. Because, of course, we have NOTHING else to do with our time than play at the fucking chalkboard.

Ahem.

Day Four (good god, is that all??) went well also. Pretty mundane stuff today, housekeeping and that kind of thing. My Do Now--er, Motivation (and you bet your ass I told my students about the joys of bureaucratic demands) was to list the parts of speech. Do you know, NONE of the students had any idea what that meant. Now, when someone suggested "noun" or "verb" they all went "oh!" But I took the opportunity (that's called the Teachable Moment, in case any administrators happened by...) to review the better-known parts of speech: noun, verb, adjective, adverb, proper noun, pronoun.

While in the hallway with one of my classes, playing my drill sergeant role etc, I glimpsed Mr Cute Teacher, watching bemusedly. And I totally cracked. Thank god I wasn't facing my kids when I broke into a grin. I can't have distractions like that when I am acting like a tough teacher! It's kind of fun, and after all, once I realized I couldn't be an Olympic gymnast (shut up), I wanted to be an actor. I don't get paid to act per se, but it's pretty damn close, huh?

People are still giving me lots of compliments on my professional outfits and stern demeanor with the kids. Yay!

This week, let's see, three more days, I am giving a reading benchmark test, the language assessment, plus at some point I have to begin introducing the four square, not to mention starting the goddamn reading and writing workshops. Um yeah, three days. Sure.

Next week-ish (emphasis on the "ish") I need to start story writing. I found an excellent packet of lesson things from Teaching That Makes Sense. I really like all their stuff, so English or writing teachers, check them out.

3 comments:

Anonymous
said...

Instead of writing "instructional objective" in chalk everyday, why not make a sign (construction paper, sentence strip, whatever), laminate it, stick a magnet on the back, and voila, no more writing that word!

Come on, don't say that to him...you'll angree the teacher who is too lazy to write two simple words on the board. God forbid, everyone else approached their professions this way. We wonder why our kids' vocabularly is filled with acronyms from internet vernacular rather than a suitable vocabulary, which reflects their age?